The Company of Wolves:
The fairy stories of old (Grimm, Perrault, etc.) were used as pedagogical tools used to reinforce the ideological narrative that girls are inherently different to boys and more susceptible to danger simply because of their genitalia. This is never more overt than in the original ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ stories which fundamentally illustrate the message that if young girls put their trust in predatory male strangers then they will be ‘eaten up’. Angela Carter seeks to challenge this unjust narrative that girls will be punished despite the actual crime being performed by the “wolf”. In fact, before Carter composed The Bloody Chamber, in Andrea Dworkin wrote a scathing criticism of gender identity in her text, Woman Hating. Dworkin rightly identifies that virgin/whore paradigm is founded in childhood through fairy tales, stating; “There are two definitions of woman. There is the good woman. She is a victim. There is the bad woman. She must be destroyed. The good woman must be possessed. The bad woman must be killed, or punished. Both must be nullified.” (61)8 and that; “We have taken the fairy tales of childhood with us into maturity, chewed but still lying in the stomach, as real identity.” (37)[1]. Christina Bacchilega more recently, in 1997, supported this statement, even claiming that the traditional versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ were written for the aristocracy and that; “The girl (and women in general) is seen as a victim and seducer, the red colour being an evidence of her complicity with the devil.” (57)[2]. In ‘The Company of Wolves’ Carter abandons the idea of any binary gender power and ultimately the sexual power is awarded to neither. The girl encounters the charming and disguised wolf (the traditional mode of manipulation of the wolf) on her way to her Grandmother’s house and they wager that if he reaches her Grandmother’s home before her, she will have to kiss him. Rather than being manipulated by him, it is she who takes the power: “for she wanted to dawdle on her way to make sure the handsome gentleman would win his wager.” (135)[3]. Upon arriving at her the house, she soon realises that the wolf has eaten Grandmother and is forcefully trapped by the wolf and, then starts the litany by which the original story is renowned; Carter turns it into a seductive exchange between the naked girl and the slavering wolf:
“What big arms you have.
All the better to hug you with.
Every wolf in the world now howled a prothalamion outside the window
as she freely gave the kiss she owed him.
What big teeth you have!
She saw how his jaw began to slaver and the room was full of the clamour
of the forest's Liebestod but the wise child never flinched” (138).
When he tells her that his teeth are “All the better to eat you with.” (138). In this way the power is evenly distributed between the genders, whilst the wolf tries to unbalance and scare Little Red Riding Hood into submission, she neither tries to escape nor fight back. The girl is far from helpless and in fact embraces her sexuality, giving herself freely the predator.
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